Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #undertheknife
Most recents (11)
(1/11) Thomas Holmes—the “Father of Modern Embalming”—had an unusual way of advertising his services during the American Civil War. In shop windows, he displayed the preserved bodies of unknown soldiers, which he collected from battlefields. Buckle up for today's THREAD! 👇 
(2/11) Prior to the Civil War, embalming was used chiefly to preserve specimens. Surgeons and anatomists often used arsenic when creating dry mount displays from cadaverous remains. By and large, it worked, though many anatomists suffered arsenic poisoning as a result.
(3/11) The nature of embalming changed during the Civil War. Suddenly there was a need to return the bodies of dead soldiers to their families. It was during this period that the foundations of the modern funeral industry were laid, & the professional embalmer began to emerge.
(1/10) THREAD 👇My sole purpose in life is to arm you with gruesome facts that will ensure you have something horrible on hand to shock people at parties. So let's get started with CORPSE MEDICINE.
(2/10) In the past, some people believed that the blood of executed criminals could cure epilepsy. They would gather close to the scaffold to catch the hot liquid as it spurted from the severed arteries of the neck, and then drink it in the hope it might cure them.
(3/10) In Denmark, the young Hans Christian Andersen witnessed parents forcing their sick child to drink blood at the scaffold. So popular was this treatment, that executioners routinely had their assistants catch blood in cups to be sold later to the sick.
Looking forward to todays #MentalHealthCrisisSummit with @keepnhspublic @nhscampaigns in London. I'll be speaking this afternoon on health of health service professionals in a session that will be focused on the mental health of workers @UniteinHealth @unitetheunion @Unite_MHNA
This mornings #MentalHealthCrisisSummit is chaired by @SoniaAdesara. She promises this won’t be a talking shop but will come up with campaign aims that we can all sign up to.
.@IanBFAWU, president of @bfawu1 talks about the workers his union represents, some of the most insecure in the UK. Highlights the work they’ve done in supporting fast food workers. #MentalHealthCrisisSummit
(1/11) THREAD👇#FolkloreThursday: During the 19th century, many people living in Derbyshire meticulously collected and stored their fallen or extracted teeth in jars. When a person died, these teeth were placed inside the coffin alongside the corpse. (Photo: Hunterian).
(2/11) On Judgment Day, those who failed to do this would be damned to search for the lost teeth in a bucket of blood located deep within the fiery pits of Hell. Stories like this help us to understand why people in the past feared the anatomist’s knife.
(3/11) Deliberate mutilation of the body could have dire consequences in the afterlife. For many living in earlier periods, dissection represented the destruction of one’s identity. Most people imagined the dead to have an active, physical role in the next world.
This is me, holding a BOOK BOUND IN THE SKIN OF THE MURDERER William Burke, now at @surgeonshall. Want to know more about anthropodermic bibliopegy (binding books with human skin)? Check out my video on my YouTube channel #UnderTheKnife:
Human skin books might interest @joerogan because he's weird like me 😂
@surgeonshall One for you @JorgeHinojosaLA
(1/12) THREAD 👇Contrary to popular belief, George Washington's dentures were not wooden. At his inauguration in 1789, he only had one tooth. John Greenwood—a dentist from New York—fashioned a set of dentures from ivory, and a mixture of cow & human teeth. [From @NYAMhistory]
(2/12) Unsurprisingly, tooth loss was a common problem in the 18th century. Toothbrushes made of coarse horse hair often did more harm than good. This example belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, and is now housed at @ExploreWellcome.
(3/12) The wealthy might choose to have a “live” tooth implanted. The recipient had the rotten tooth removed before a selection of donors, who would then have their own healthy teeth extracted until the right size was found. Afterwards, it was affixed using a silver wire.
(1/11) Thomas Holmes—the “Father of Modern Embalming”—had an unusual way of advertising his services during the American Civil War. In shop windows, he displayed the preserved bodies of unknown soldiers, which he collected from battlefields. Buckle up for today’s THREAD! 👇
(2/11) Prior to the Civil War, embalming was used chiefly to preserve specimens. Surgeons and anatomists often used arsenic when creating dry mount displays from cadaverous remains. By and large, it worked, though many anatomists suffered arsenic poisoning as a result.
(3/11) The nature of embalming changed during the Civil War. Suddenly there was a need to return the bodies of dead soldiers to their families. It was during this period that the foundations of the modern funeral industry were laid, & the professional embalmer began to emerge.
(1/11) THREAD👇Let’s talk about the BLOODY HISTORY BEHIND THE BARBER’S POLE. For centuries, barbers and surgeons had separate guilds, but these were merged by Henry VIII in 1540 when he granted a charter to the Company of Barber-Surgeons.
(2/11) The edict also allowed the bodies of four executed criminals to be anatomized annually at public demonstrations, and the teaching of anatomy became an important function of the Company.
(3/11) Barber-surgeons performed a variety of services: they lanced abscesses, set bone fractures, picked lice from hair & pulled rotten teeth. One of the keystones of the barber-surgeon's duties was BLOODLETTING. It's this last service which epitomizes the barber’s pole.
I just hit 40K! Welcome followers, old & new. Over the next few days, I’ll be tweeting 40 FAVOURITE HISTORY OBJECTS, starting with #40: a medieval skull fused with chainmail. The soldier died at the Battle of Visby in 1361 in Gotland, Sweden. He was buried in his armour.
#39 in my 40 FAVOURITE HISTORY OBJECTS: the Beauchêne skull, or exploded skull. It’s a type of anatomical preparation invented by the French anatomist Claude Beauchêne in the 19th century. This stunning example was created by Ryan Matthew Cohn.
#38 of my 40 FAVOURITE HISTORY OBJECTS: the world's oldest complete example of a human with metastatic cancer. Researchers from Durham University & the British Museum discovered evidence of tumors in this 3,000-year-old skeleton found in the Sudan in 2013: livescience.com/44269-oldest-m…
(1/10) THREAD 👇👇I enticed @AndyRichter to follow me by promising him a rich diet of gruesome facts that would ensure he always has something horrible on hand to shock people at cocktail parties. So, let’s get started with: CORPSE MEDICINE.
(2/10) In the past, some people believed that the blood of executed criminals could cure epilepsy. They would gather close to the scaffold to catch the hot liquid as it spurted from the severed arteries of the neck, and then drink it in the hope it might cure them.
(3/10) In Denmark, the young Hans Christian Andersen witnessed parents forcing their sick child to drink blood at the scaffold. So popular was this treatment, that executioners routinely had their assistants catch blood in cups to be sold later to the sick.
THREAD 👇 (1/10) #FolkloreTuesday: During the 19th century, many people living in Derbyshire meticulously collected and stored their fallen or extracted teeth in jars. When a person died, these teeth were placed inside the coffin alongside the corpse. (Photo: Hunterian).
(2/11) On Judgment Day, those who failed to do this would be damned to search for the lost teeth in a bucket of blood located deep within the fiery pits of Hell. Stories like this help us to understand why people in the past feared the anatomist’s knife.
(3/11) Deliberate mutilation of the body could have dire consequences in the afterlife. For many living in earlier periods, dissection represented the destruction of one’s identity. Most people imagined the dead to have an active, physical role in the next world.
